Month: April 2017

Does Your Church Fail to Execute Plans? This Could be Why

Posted on April 24, 2017 by - Articles, Church & Faith-Based, Culture, Execution, Leading Organizations, Team Building

Generally speaking, you can find these four types of people on any team:

Detailed Doers
These are people who are more driven by the mission of what needs to be accomplished and they process decisions and engage their responsibilities at a slower pace. They are primarily focused on accuracy.

Steady Supporters
This group is also slower paced, but they are driven by relationships more than the mission. You want people like this on your team, because they want to maintain stability.

Charismatic Connectors
These folks are the life of the party. They are faster paced and they are driven by relationships. Because of that combination, they are able to deliver influence.

Mission-Minded Motivators
As the label suggests, they are driven by the mission of what needs to be accomplished primarily in the long-term. They are also faster paced in how they operate and process information and decisions. They focus on delivering results.

I bet as soon as you read those four descriptions, you’ve already determined which is most like you. Healthy teams value them all. But I’ve noticed something over the years as my team at The Unstuck Group has served over 200 churches: Few church staff teams have a good representation of all four. And that creates an execution problem.

Churches tend to hire people driven by relationships rather than mission. It makes sense. We are in the people business. But when you combine that with the fact we all have a natural tendency to hire people who are just like us, it often leads to a big gap in systems and strategy and follow-through. The Detailed Doers and Mission-Minded Motivators tend to be the people wired up to execute plans. And if you struggle to follow through on your plans, they are probably missing from your team.

To move from where you are now to where God wants you to be in the future, you need teammates who are different from you. They will bring unique experiences you don’t have. They’ll have strengths you don’t have. They’ll help you minister to all parts of the body of Christ rather than the part that’s wired up just like you. Failure to execute on plans will ultimately hinder your church from healthy growth.

Let me recommend several ways to get unstuck:

  1. Gain a clear understanding of the gaps on your team. This is a good first step to getting unstuck in this area.
  2. Direct your execution energy and resources toward the right things.
  3. Recognize the unique challenges your church is facing in the current phase of its life cycle.

Most churches start, grow, thrive, decline and eventually end, but I don’t think that reflects God’s plan for the Church.

To learn more about these phases, check out The Unstuck Church: Equipping Churches to Experience Sustained Health. Through a strategic process, your church can find its way to sustained health.

The Curious Creature of Habit—2017 GLS Faculty Spotlight

Posted on April 20, 2017 by - News & Updates

We are delighted to announce that Fredrik Härén, one of the world’s experts on creativity, will be joining us for the Global Leadership Summit in 2017. The following excerpt is taken from his bestseller “The Idea Book.”

Break Old Ways of Thinking

We humans are curious creatures of habit. If we were not curious about the world, then we would still be living in caves.

However, at the same time we are confirmed creatures of habit.  As soon as we have learnt something, we keep on doing it in the same old way. And it is just as well, for if we were continually to question everything, then we would probably go mad. The problem is, however, that our brains trick us into thinking along the same old lines a bit too successfully.

It is, after all, natural for us to imitate. Most animals imitate their parents thus learning how to fly, hunt, swim and so on. In the same way, children listen to their parents and learn a language. It is natural to imitate. To learn and then do the direct opposite is unnatural.

An idea is similar to the transformation of information. Give 100 people access to the same information and 99 of them will consider it to be a fact. One person out of 100 will think: “Mmm, but what if we could….” Just as in nature, 99 percent of these information exchanges are not so successful, while the hundredth one makes sure that development goes forward.

There is a story about an advertising executive in Los Angeles who was so fed up with being stuck in a rut that he forced himself to find new ways of getting to work every day. He never took the same route to work in his nine years of commuting. (Toward the end, he was forced to reverse down one-way streets in order not to repeat himself.)

ACTIVITY

Identify something at work that you always do in the same old way. Next time you come to do that task, ask yourself if you can do it in another way instead. Consider it a creative challenge to find 20 ways of doing that routine task and do not give up until you have succeeded.

The idea is not necessarily to find a new solution to everyday tasks, but to help you identify all the things in life that we do out of pure habit.

 

 Fredrik Härén is a business creativity expert who has authored nine books, including “The Idea Book”—credited as one of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time” He’s a global speaker who has been invited to speak to leaders in more than 60 countries on six continents on the importance of creativity in solving problems. Recognizing how challenging it is, Härén provides practical steps to hep individuals and organizations become more creative.

Guest faculty members are invited to participate in The Global Leadership Summit based on proven leadership abilities in their field of expertise. Their beliefs may not necessarily reflect those of Willow Creek Association and Willow Creek Community Church, and their presence at the Summit does not imply blanket endorsement of their views or affiliations.

Wilfredo De Jesús Challenges Friends to Fill the Gap in Their Struggling Town

Posted on April 19, 2017 by - Because of the GLS, Business, North America, Stories

After attending The Global Leadership Summit for the first time in 2014, Doug King and Paula Cammarata were affirmed in their vision to open a business in a struggling mill town in Wisconsin. “The GLS affirmed in me that I wanted to make an impact on young lives and families in my community,” Doug says.

For a long time, Doug and Paula saw a gap in their community where there was no place for families to experience positive community outside the church.

God used the Summit to speak loud and clear through Wilfredo De Jesús when he challenged them to “fill the gap.”

Doug and Paula stepped up to the challenge.

They wanted to serve families and let them experience God’s love, so they opened Blu Play Café. Centered on Christian values, the business is part café and part playground, providing families with a place to gather and share community with others.

“This cafe is changing our community,” Dan DeRoche, lead pastor at the Wisconsin Rapids Woodlands Church, says. “They host birthday parties for kids, which is filling a huge need in our city. Many people say when they go there, it makes a difference in their lives.

 

“Doug and Paula use the cafe as a platform to share God’s love in practical ways. As a pastor, it is one of the most amazing forms of outreach I have seen,” Dan explains. “Our city went through a very difficult tragedy recently when a man who took the lives of his three-year old son and his five-year old daughter and then took his own life. His wife was not home at the time. In response, Blu Play Cafe hosted and sponsored many events in their honor, offering a safe place for the mother to come and ‘receive healing from her community’ (her words).”

“Here are two people who had a vision from God to make a difference in their city and they did that by opening a business that impacts the lives of many,” says Dan. “I have witnessed many in our community who have been impacted deeply by this business. It is making a positive difference for Christ in a city that can be filled with a lot of negativity.”

Centered on Christian values, Blu Play Café is serving families, and employing young people who are getting out of their shells and becoming leaders. We’re thankful for stories like these, and hearing about leaders who decided to fill the gap in their communities.

What might God want to share with you at this year’s Summit? “If you don’t think you can learn something from the Summit, then you definitely should be the one to go,” Doug shares.

The Myth of Overnight Success

Posted on April 18, 2017 by - Articles, Calling, Leading Yourself, Productivity

We all love inspirational stories of leadership breakthroughs. But where do those breakthroughs originate? In his new book, Dream Big, Think Small, Jeff Manion (GLS 2010) explores the under-valued virtue of long-term faithfulness. Here’s an excerpt:

A while back, my wife, Chris and I visited the Wright Brothers National Memorial, just outside Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. There, on December 17, 1903, the two brothers made history. The Wright brothers are celebrated as being the first human beings to achieve controlled flight.

Sudden success.

But explore David McCullough’s book The Wright Brothers, and you realize the agonizingly slow business of getting that plane off the ground. It took years of tinkering, designing, experimenting, failing, adjusting and trying again. Their work was so tedious that the residents of Dayton, Ohio—where many of their experimental flights occurred—were largely blind to the fact that history was being made just outside their town. If you had journeyed into the countryside to observe the phenomenon, you might have witnessed nothing more than two men tinkering with various airplane parts for weeks on end. There was nothing much to see. Airborne moments were rare.

Years later, Orville and Wilber’s own nephew reflected, “History was happening in those moments, there in their shop and in their home, but I didn’t realize it at the time because it seemed so commonplace.”

There it is. The invention that has, perhaps more than any other, shaped the last hundred years of human history. And the term to describe the achievement? Commonplace. It is human nature to celebrate the astounding breakthrough rather than the repetitive, tedious work that leads to the breakthrough.

I once heard Pastor Craig Groeschel address a generation of young leaders. He observed, “You’ll likely overestimate what you can do in the short run, but underestimate what you can do in a lifetime of faithfulness.”

So true.

Most of us are not attempting to unlock the mysteries of flight. We lead families, companies, churches and schools. We serve as nurses, coaches, sales reps, parents and youth pastors. It is common to grow weary, bored or even disillusioned as we pour ourselves into the people around us. But when big dreams are finally realized, it is through the steady devotion of bringing ourselves, again and again, day after day, year after year to the little stuff. Success in the large things requires deep, abiding commitment to the small things.

I reflect on the gracious marriage built on the routine habit of swiftly apologizing when a minor wound has been inflicted. Or the exceptional hotel where every interaction with an employee ends with, “Is there any other way I can serve you?” I marvel when a lower-middle-class family builds a solid financial life through saving a bit of money from every single paycheck—for years. And I’m overwhelmed with gratitude when I discover this same family lives with radical generosity, giving away money from every single paycheck.

These are small things, really—saying “I’m sorry,” offering to serve, disciplined saving and giving. But over time, these small things accumulate to produce great marriages, great companies and great lives.

I’ve written these words to encourage you to remain diligent in the small things.  

Your work matters. Your life matters. I encourage you to build an extraordinary life—a day at a time.

Big dreams must be anchored in small, life-giving habits.

This is why I challenge you to dream big, but think small.Taken from Dream Big, Think Small by Jeff Manion. The book offers a six-week reading plan and exercises to help readers build the practices of long-term faithfulness. Copyright 2017 by Jeff Manion. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.zondervan.com.